Three more days on the duck house project.

Firstly, I bought a much more compact cap for the end of the feeder tube. I want a removable cap, so I can clean out the tube every so often. You can see my original notion on the left, basically the same as I used in the chicken coop, but that clearly would take up too much of the length of the pipe in this situation. So I found a different kind, that adds pretty much no length to the pipe, attaching by expanding a rubber gasket inside the pipe. This will work much better:

Another purchase was an automatic door opener, the same model I use in both chicken coops. It has a light sensor to open the door at dawn, and close it at dusk, so it needs to be outside. I cut a hole through the front (west) wall, and temporarily installed it (I’ll remove it again when painting):

Here’s the inside view of the automatic opener and duck door. The opener is screwed from the back onto a couple of bits of wood, such that the string from it hangs inside; later it will be tied to the door. An unusual installation, but means I don’t need any pulleys like on the old coop:

Next, I made the inner floor, a second floor layer that can be pulled out to aid cleaning out the duck house. It has thin runners on the bottom to reduce friction, and prevent any water from being trapped between the two layers:

Here’s the inner floor in place:

I recently mentioned temporarily using the duck house camera to watch the shop cat Pepper. I retrieved the camera and temporarily clamped it to the house, to determine the best mounting location:

Here’s the camera view from my preferred location, just inside the maintenance door. This gives a view into the nesting boxes and almost all of the floor space, except the corner under the camera, which is where the water dispenser will be located. (Enjoy the recursive photo of me capturing the view on my iPad):

I also tried other camera positions, like the vent side:

And behind the feeder tube:

But I think the originally planned location by the maintenance door gives the best view.

Since there will be the camera, a heated water dispenser, and a light in the duck house, I drilled a hole near the roof into the storage cupboard for their wires:

On to the trim work. I added trim around the internal treat door. You can also see the wire hole in the top-right, and below it a notched bit of plywood to cover the hole:

I added trim to the edge of the roof. It’ll later have metal drip strip and shingles, like the cat house:

Awning trim; the board at the top of the awning isn’t attached yet, as it’ll go on after the shingles, to hide the nails of the top row:

Duck door trim:

Opener trim:

The big vent on the south wall has a cover that slides vertically. It will be held at various heights by a slide bolt on either side that slides into holes drilled in the trim:

I glued bits of plywood to the vent cover, to later mount the bolts onto to get the right depth:

The vent cover installed. The notch out of the trim allows the cover to be slid to the left to be removed entirely (which I probably will never do, other than when painting):

All the roof, corner, and door surround trim are now installed. I still need to do the trim on the doors themselves, and the fake board-and-batten styling.

Let’s take spin around the duck house. Here the east and north sides (cupboard and maintenance doors):

The north and west sides (maintenance and duck doors):

The west and south sides (duck door and vent):

The south and east sides (vent and cupboard):

Finally, I did a bit of caulking of the joins:

I spent the last five days working on building the duck house, and finished the primary construction on the walls and roof.

You may recall from last time that I cut the floor, walls, and studs.  So I started work by assembling the front (west) wall and its studs onto the floor, laying it on its side to nail through the floor:

When I built the cat house, I built the floor, walls, and roof as separate pieces, screwed together on installation, with the floor attached to the floor joists. This time I’m building the floor and walls as a unit, with the roof and floor joists as separate pieces.  The floor joists will be a little heavy, being made out of treated 2x4s, and the roof will be heavy, with the rafters and shingles, but the walls will be heaviest, which is why I attached the thick floor to the joists last time.  But having the floor attached to the walls makes construction easier, and should make transportation when installing easier too, since the floor can rest on the cart, and hold everything together better. That’s the theory, anyway. We’ll see!

Anyway, I next assembled framing for the back (east) and middle walls:

Then attached the framing to the floor:

I joined the studs with top plates, angled to match the slope of the roof:

Next was the nesting boxes, the top of which also serves as the shelf in the storage area:

There is a hole through the shelf for a feeder tube, which is supplied by a jug that will contain food:

I made a wall to separate the cupboard from the rest of the duck house, with a 1’ square hole for a “treat hatch”; a small door through which I can toss mealworms to the ducks, without having to open the maintenance door. Plus side walls too:

A view from the other side, showing the treat hatch and nesting boxes:

The hole for the jug is closed with a couple of bits of plywood, that will eventually be screwed into place; these also hold the pipe in position:

This is the feeder tube, or will be in due course; I’ll add a cap to the end, and cut large holes on top from which the ducks can eat.  In addition to the above hole closure, the pipe is supported with a brace below:

To finish the back wall, I added boards to act as doorstops, and plywood for the wall:

I also cut cupboard doors from plywood.  The walls and doors will have trim added later:

Here’s me, all bundled up for the cold. The front of the shop isn’t insulated, so it was about freezing temperature in there:

Next up was the south wall, which features a large vent (that will be covered with hardware cloth wire), with a vertically sliding door. Here you can see the vent cover leaning on the wall (which again will have trim later), and a recessed wall below the vent:

The bottom of the recessed wall has a sloped board for drainage:

Here is a view from inside of the vent and wall:

I added some extra framing to the front (west) wall, to aid attaching decorations later (to be determined), plus made a vertically sliding door that the ducks will use to access the pond:

Time for the roof! I placed some thicker plywood on top, and used scraps of wood to help figure out the desired size of the eaves:

Once I determined that, I cut the roof panels, using a jury rigged structure to hold them in place. Here’s one side:

Both sides of roof, held in place with clamps:

To help join the two halves of the roof and provide some rigidity, I added a couple of small rafters out of 2x4s. Here’s one:

A view inside, showing both rafters etc (the plywood in the back is the vent cover):

I realized that my design was missing an important feature: an awning for the duck door. Not sure why I hadn’t included that, having made awnings for both the chicken coop and cat house. Perhaps thinking that the ducks don’t mind the wet, but I still don’t want any more moisture going in the duck house than necessary. So I built a simple awning, much like on the cat house:

Here’s the awning installed above the duck door (again, it’ll have trim and roofing later):

Finally, I added a small vent above the maintenance doorway; ducks need lots of ventilation:

That’s all for now; time to do some paying work. I’ll probably resume working on this next weekend, or thereabouts. Next up is starting on adding the trim. I’m hoping to finish that and get it painted by the end of March, but we’ll see how much time I can spend on it.